List of Atrocities committed by the United States of America
The United States of America 'has committed a long list of atrocities in its 250-year lifespan, whether they would be against an ethnic group or a foreign nation. The US Government has apologized for most of the crimes listed on this page. This can include war crimes and crimes against humanity. Relocation and War of Native Americans The United States, in its infancy, relocated Native Americans to certain reserves in order to make space for farming, most infamous of which was the Trail of Tears. Sometimes, the government even waged war against them. Many of these events occurred during the presidency of Andrew Jackson and later under Benjamin Harrison. Mistreatment of African-Americans Slavery of African-Americans A period of time lasting centuries where the US brought over people from Africa, just to enslave them. This was considered as an okay thing to do, but quickly turned into a controversial subject. The act reached its climax in the American Civil War and was banned after that. Discrimination against African-Americans Despite the end of the American Civil War, it continued to have a lasting influence on America well into the 1960's as institutionalized discrimination and racism against blacks remained in place, as well as the influence of the Ku Klux Klan on American politics, particularly in the South. Following a rise in hate crimes such as lynchings all while law enforcement looked the other way (if they didn't outright perpetrate said acts), the Civil Rights Movement began in the 50's and 60's, eventually leading to better treatment of blacks in America. See Andrew Johnson, Bull Connor, Eugene Talmadge, George Wallace Banning of Chinese Americans ''See Asiaphobia Chinese Americans were considered as illegal in the late 19th and early 20th century. This ban lasted for a couple of years, until the act was pulled out. Sinking of USS Maine On the 15th of February 1897, the USS Maine was destroyed in an explosion in Havana Harbour, Cuba, killing 266 crew members and leading to the outbreak of the Spanish-American war. The cause of the explosion has never officially been discovered, but America is widely believed to have been responsible. Invasion of the Philippines In 1899, president William McKinley ordered the invasion of the Philippines in order to extend the USA's "manifest destiny" to become a leading player on the world stage. During the occupation, US troops slaughtered 200,000 Filipino civilians, and McKinley subsequently ordered the destruction of crops and the establishment of Concentration Camps in order to "educate the populace about Christianity" after they resisted. Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 Considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States, the '''Tulsa race riot (also known as the Greenwood Massacre) was a massacre as a result of a white mob consisting of civilians, policeman, and National Guardsmen attacked residents and businesses of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Buck v Bell In 1927 the supreme court ruled the sterilization of "unfit" people such as epileptics, drunks and criminals to be constitutional under US law after Virginia ordered the sterilization of Carrie Buck. Although this was initially outlawed in 1942 the sterilization of mental patients continued until the 1970s. Prohibition Chemist's War During prohibition, the US government killed 10,000 of their own citizens with poisoned industrial alcohol to deter people from drinking it. Martial Law in Hawaii After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan during World War II, the National Guard took over Hawaii and declared martial law. The American government distrusted the Hawaiian people and systematically stripped away many of their rights, forcing them to carry ID cards, censoring their media and using many of the people essentially as slave labour to dig bomb shelters until 1944 when martial law ended. Internment of Japanese Americans During WW2, the US moved all Japanese Americans living in the west to concentration camps, meant to keep them from society out of fear that any of them could be a spy or saboteur, per an executive order issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This is considered an act of ethnic cleansing. These ended once WW2 ended. Edgewood Arsenal human experiments From 1948 to 1975, the US Army Chemical Corps engaged in experiments on about 7, 000 human test subjects in order to test the effects of nerve agents on humans. The experiments involved exposing the test subjects to chemical weapons such as sarin and mustard gas, as well as psychoactive drugs such as LSD and PCP. It was ultimately halted in 1975 following a government investigation. Operation Ajax The US government initiated "Operation Ajax" in 1953, with the help of the British government and a group of Iranian insurgents. This was a plan to overthrow prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in order to increase the power of exiled ruler Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, thus resulting in Pahlavi giving a monopoly on Iranian oil to the two countries. Project MK-Ultra Possibly one of the most infamous examples of the United States committing atrocities against its own citizens, Project MK-Ultra was a series of illegal mind-control experiments performed on American and Canadian citizens by the CIA from 1953 to 1973. The techniques used included use of psychoactive drugs, electroshock therapy, isolation and even sexual abuse in an attempt to manipulate the subject's mental state. COINTELPRO COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program) was a series of covert projects started in 1956 and carried out by the FBI under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover and William C. Sullivan to discredit and disrupt "subversive political organisations", such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther Party and the feminist movement. COINTELPRO utilised tactics such as blackmail, false imprisonment and even outright murder to silence prominent members of the groups, until it was eventually discontinued in 1971. Operation Condor Operation Condor was a campaign of state terror perpetrated by various right-wing military dictatorships in South America and heavily supported by the CIA during the Cold War, in an attempt to combat Communism and Soviet influence in South America. The campaign was overseen by the Nixon administration and supported by Henry Kissinger. Notable South American dictators who were involved included Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, Hugo Banzer of Bolivia, and Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina. Kent State shootings On May 4th 1970, a student protest against the Vietnam War at Kent State University, Ohio, was fired on by the National Guard, killing four students and injuring nine, some of whom were simply watching the protest or walking nearby. Operation Cyclone In 1979, the CIA launched Operation Cyclone, a secret operation to arm and finance the mujahideen in order to force the Soviet Union to withdraw aid from Afghanistan and decrease the influence of Communism in the area. The operation was halted in 1989 following Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, but funding to militant groups continued until the Gulf War. War Crimes World War II *On 12th September 1942, the British naval vessel the RMS Laconia was sunk by a German U-Boat, the crew of which then began a rescue attempt. However, the German rescuers were strafed by the US Air Force, killing many of the British survivors in the process. *On 26th January 1943, the submarine the USS Yahoo fired on several lifeboats from the Japanese transport ship the Buyo Maru. The US military refused to apologise for this, claiming that the men in the lifeboats had fired first, however Japanese survivors dispute this account. **The US Navy also attacked Japanese rescue vessels and lifeboats during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in order to eliminate the Japanese seamen before they could return to duty. *The Canicattì Massacre took place during the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, when the United States army shot and killed eight Italian civilians in the village of Canicattì. *On 14th July 1943, the Biscari Massacre occurred. This was in fact two separate incidents during which Sergeant Horace West and Captain John Compton both extrajudicially executed groups of POWs during the occupation of Sicily. *After the liberation of Dachau, a German Concentration Camp, American soldiers, disgusted by what they saw, rounded up the guards and shot and killed 35-50 of them in what is known as the Dachau Massacre. *Operation Teardrop was a Torture program implemented by the US Navy in April and May 1945, wherein German personnel captured after the destruction of the German U-Boat U-546 were abusively interrogated by US officers for information about alleged planned missile attacks, resulting in one committing suicide. *During the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, US Marines rounded up all of the civilians of a village in the Motobu Peninsula. After failing to find any Japanese soldiers, they proceeded to rape several women, and were testified to have returned several times over a period of multiple weeks to take the women to the hills and gang-rape them. Korea *From 26th - 29th July 1950, around 400 South Korean civilians fleeing from North Korean troops in Yongdong were killed by the United States military in what is now known as the No Gun Ri Massacre. This began on the 26th, when the US Air Force bombed the refugees, and the 2nd Battalion and 7th US Cavalry Regiment subsequently slaughtered more of them until they were eventually saved by the arrival of the North Korean army. *The Sinchon Massacre occurred between 17th October and 7th December 1950, when the American and South Korean military forces brutally murdered around 35380 North Korean civilians in the town of Sinchon during their advance into North Korea. Vietnam *The best known example of American war crimes during the Vietnam War is the My Lai Massacre, perpetrated by soldiers of the U.S. Army on March 16, 1968. Men, women, and children were gang-raped, mutilated, and murdered, with children as young as 12 being among the victims. *The secret bombing campaign carried out on Cambodia by the Nixon administration (and directed by Henry Kissinger) resulted in heavy civilian casualties in Cambodia as well as portions of Laos and Vietnam. Though the target was the North Vietnamese leadership, there were considerably more civilian casualties than North Vietnamese casualties. *It has been estimated that around 5,500 attacks against civilians were committed by US forces from 1960 to 1972, with at least 4000 people killed. Afghanistan *CIA contractor David Passaro beat an Afghan man named Abdul Wali to death on June 21, 2003. *From January to May 2010 a group of five American soldiers known as the Kill Team murdered at least three Afghan civilians (including one teenager) in faked combat situations and took photos of the bodies. *US Army soldier Robert Bales massacred 16 civilians in the villages of Balandi and Alkozai in Afghanistan on March 11, 2012, including 9 children. Iraq *Illegal weapons such as white phosphorus and MK-77 incendiary bombs were used against Iraqi insurgents by USAF forces during the First Battle of Fallujah. No-one was charged. **Also during the First Battle of Fallujah, Duncan Hunter's US Marine Corps unit deliberately targeted and killed civilians, and fired on ambulances carrying wounded Iraqi soldiers. *The Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke after it was revealed that US army and CIA personnel such as Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick had abused innocent detainees physically, mentally and sexually under the orders of Ricardo Sánchez. Eleven soldiers were convicted over the allegations and two others faced non-judicial punishment after their role came to light. *A fourteen-year-old girl was gang-raped and murdered and her family shot to death on March 12, 2006 by members of the 502nd Infantry Regiment, who celebrated the massacre with chicken wings and alcohol. 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